He Who Waits Behind The Wall
by Pinguin1993
Summary: Based on a picture by *y0do I found on dA: There was no warning. Six minutes ago, Sherlock had been playing the violin. And now he is gone, and the clues are written in blood...
1. Blood

**A/N: **_Hello, everyone. This story wasn't planned and it wasn't worked out and it wasn't really a plot bunny either. It was a sudden, intense, downright frightening experience and it needed to get _**out.** _It is based on a very- I don't even know what to call it really. A Sherlock picture I found on dA, drawn by *y0do. I suggest you look at it _after _reading this fic_. _Here's the link (remember to remove blanks): _

deviantart. com/ art/he-who-waits-behind-the-wall-207272424?q= gallery%3Ay0do%2F26786669&qo=36

_I should probably tell you that I'm German and I have never seen Regent's Park Tube Station from the inside. Also I've never written angst before. Please leave me a review to tell me if it was any good at all. There will be a chapter two to wrap it all up, I think._

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><p><strong>He Who Waits Behind The Wall<strong>

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><p>There was no warning.<p>

John has been out for exactly seven minutes and twentysix seconds, though he will likely never know that. He left for some grocery-shopping, then came back after half of the way because it was colder outside than previously expected and he wanted to fetch his scarf from the wardrobe. He first left the flat to the scratching jigsaw sound of a moody Sherlock's violin, and finds it shrouded in an eerie calm that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

The door to flat B is closed. He could just take his scarf, get the milk from the supermarket like he ought to, and be back in under twenty minutes. Surely Sherlock is just fine in there, flat on his back on the sofa grumpy and bitter as usual. Surely the man is just provoking him with this, because he _has_ to have heard John coming back in. Mood or not, the man hears _everything_.

„Sherlock?"

No sound answers his silent call. _It isn't that abnormal for one like Sherlock_, he thinks. _It's fine, it's all fine._

Except it isn't.

As soon as he is out in the crispy cold air again, he notices what he failed to notice while he was still inside the building. Only now that it is gone does the smell register in his mind, and it sends him right into a downward spiral of fear. The last time this smell filled his nostrils, out of the blue and unexpected, he had been dying in the sand under the nonforgiving Afghanistan sun.

Blood.

Inside, the air has been thick with the metallic, sickening scent of fresh blood.

He has difficulties to get the key back into the lock - fumbles with his gloves in nothing short of desperation, manages the door open, flies up the stairs stumbling over his own feet and cursing them, cursing himself, just _cursing_ because it reminds him so much of _that time _and back there cursing had been all that still bound him to the living. He doesn't resort to praying, not yet. Not before he knows what's going on. His right hand finds the door handle while his left fishes the cellphone out of his coat pocket, typing away almost on its own accord.

_Emergency._

Just this one word, because that much he knows, that much he can deduce. The rest is up to his guess at this point. He texts it to Lestrade, then to Mycroft. Probably the wrong order. He doesn't have time thinking about this right now. Instead, he pushes the door open and plunges into the darkness that is their flat. This is wrong, because though the sun is setting outside, the lights should be on in here. The smell is worse now, so much worse, seeping into his brain like poison and _he can't see anything_. Where is the light switch? He feels for it along the wall and his hand touches something slippery before he finds the object of his desire. _Waterslimeacidanythingbut. _Suddenly he is afraid to turn the lights on and now _that_ is just downright _ridiculous_, he hasn't even been gone for ten minutes, what could possiby have happened?

„Sherlock?"

The silent darkness seems vicious enough to try and actively devour him. He presses the switch.

Mycoft's men find him eight minutes later just there, kneeling on the floor, unmoving but for his heaving chest. They stop next to him in the doorway to discuss possible strategies in hushed voices when Lestrade's car can be heard outside and they vanish just out of sight. Then the D.I. takes their stand behind him, not even breathing, not moving at all, until a heavy hand lands on John's shoulder and snaps him out of _it_ with an audible gasp. He _tries_ to think, tries _desperately_ to grasp a single thought from his empty head and_ can't. _The silence between them stretches on and on until it becomes something touchable, something dark and dangerous and he can't stand it any longer or he might very well shatter right there.

„It isn't his," he says and his voice steady enough that he hates himself a little. „Can't be, it's impossible. There is no way a single human could bleed that much."

It is true, and it doesn't make him feel better at all.

Mycroft steps past them. When did _he_ arrive? What is he _doing_? What is _anyone_ doing here, those people don't belong here, it is just wrong wrong _wrong- Sherlock_. Where is Sherlock?

„**Invoking the feeling of chaos. With out order.**"

It is only a whisper, but everyone's attention is immediately on the older Holmes who is now standing in the middle of the room, carefully avoiding the small pools and the dripping ceiling as much as he can. _He's contaminating the crime scene_, John thinks and finds himself utterly uncaring about it. He doesn't know what is more striking about the situation- that his own home has been turned into _this _in ten minute's work; that Mycroft risks to distort evidence with his actions; or that Lestrade is right here watching. He doesn't care about either possibility.

Without much thought he follows Mycoft's eyes, scanning the walls and windows- windows lined red with symbols and signs that look too _wrong_, too _twisted_ for a proper language or a code. He remembers a different kind of symbols on them, yellow spray paint put there in an attempt to look dangerous. How laughable that now seems, how downright _ridiculous_ it was. He thinks he can make out letters in the sprawled, smeared mess, but no words, no coherent sentences. Mycroft can. He is a Holmes and a Holmes knows everything. Be it by means of books or computers or security cameras or homeless people or plain _deduction_ really, they _always_ know _everything_.

_Homeless network._

It registers in his mind only now, but it is really so obvious and shining and so very _glorious_. There was a girl on the corner of Baker and Downing Street, a girl huddled into the doorway of an old apartment building. A hobo.

An _opportunity._

Slowly, he backs away, feels Lestrade's eyes on him and Mycroft's whose men are now searching the area for clues. Lestrade doesn't call backup because the government is here. Both police forces and government only continue to stare at him and John somehow manages to get down the seventeen stairs and out the front door, and onto the street, and then he is running.

The girl is still there.

Waiting for him.

He knows her, and she knows him, they have passed Sherlock's questions and the resulting answers back and forth many times and when she looks up at him now, the eyes in her dirty face are bright and awake. He finds a banknote in his jeans, not bothering to look at it, and she gives him a scrap of paper in exchange. Then she gets up, tightens the ragged blanket around her slim frame, and disappears into the night.

_Regent's_, it reads.

He walks back to Baker Street 221 in a dreamlike state, intending to get his browning and then get going, and instead runs right into Lestrade who is just leaving the building. „They are gone", he says and grimaces. „I called in forensics, after Mycroft had finished. They'll be here shortly. His men found bloody footprints somewhere, they said, but I don't know..."

John doesn't listen anymore. He walks right past the inspector, through the living room _(around the puddles, don't think about it, don't look up)_ and to the desk where he keeps his old army gun locked up in a drawer. It has been left there undisturbed. It isn't anymore. He pushes it through his belt, adjusts his jumper and coat over it, walks back to the door and outside and past Lestrade again. The man is still talking. John still ignores him. Soon enough he is running, waving for a taxi.

_Regent's Park._

It is pitch black by the time he arrives and freezingly cold. No one is here but the occasional pedestrian hurrying home. John enters the space between the trees cautiously, but without hesitation. He closes a hand around the handle of his gun and feels hot fury boiling up inside him. Let anyone try anything funny, he'll be ready. _Oh,_ and he will make them_ pay_.

He walks past a park bench, reduced to a dark shade in the blue night, and something glitters in the headlights of a car that's passing the park. He turns on his phone, ignores the unread text messages, and uses the screen to illuminate the words. Most of them are smeared and scattered, but the message is still readable, and that's what he will focus on. Not the blood. Not the dark. Just those letters.

**he who waits behind a wall**

_Wall. Wallwallwall_. There are no walls in a park, just trees. _Regent's_, just Regent's the note says. Not the park then. _Not the park. The Street_, but there are so very many walls and so many people. _Regent's. The Tube station_. He is running again, always running, finding the way by memory alone, because he can't see a thing in between the dark shades of the trees. Is it raining? His vision is all watered down- _ignore it_. Not important right now, not ever important enough.

Regent's Park Tube Station is closed down, with red-and-white wooden bars blocking the entrance, and that is really not natural, because _why_ would they close this station, so he _has_ to be right about this. _Has to be. _He jumps right over the barricade and races down the stairs where flickering light bulbs illuminate concrete walls and the smell of stale alcohol and piss is downright sickening.

The station is huge without the usual mass of pedestrians, huge and wide and empty and the lights are not nearly enough to illuminate the dark corners that loom everywhere. John pulls his gun out of his belt and holds it in front of him. His hands are very, very steady and his breath forms white clouds in front of his face and there is nothing but silence to greet him. His steps are too loud in his own ears.

„Sherlock?"

Something is dripping.

_Dripdripdripdripdrip._

He doesn't need his phone now because the flickering lightbulbs are enough. He almost wishes they weren't.

**in his right hand he holds the candle whose light is shadow**

Candles. Now where is he supposed to find candles? Light is shadow, to that he can relate, there are too many shadows here and not enough light at all. _Candles are for dead people_. Wrong train of thought._ Sherlock is ambidextruous_. Now how does _that_ help him? He doesn't know, he is just so confused, he doesn't know what to think and _Sherlock's coat was gone._

What?

Sherlock's coat. The black swishy dramatic coat he loves so much. It was still there when John first left the flat and by the time he came back, it was gone. Maybe this is all just a stupid _stupid_ game and Sherlock run off without telling him. Or texting him. Left litres of blood splashed all over the flat. And has been gone ever since. Unlikely, not impossible but highly unlikely. He raises his gun again and takes a steadying breath that he doesn't need. He _is_ steady, and calm, and he will _fucking kill_ everyone who dares stand in his way now.

„Sherlock, if you are here, answer me!"

His voice echoes through the tunnels and bounces off the walls. There is no response, but John is cautiously moving from wall to wall, gun straight ahead- just because _Sherlock_ isn't here doesn't mean _no one_ is, after all- and then he spots it. A dancing, flickering dot in the black hole that's the tramway. Down on the tracks. A candle.

He doesn't even think about it at this point anymore, he just jumps off the platform, careful to avoid the electric part of the rails that will likely kill him when touched, and walks down into what feels like the _giant maw of_ _nothing_. He can't see. Again. Too dark and too much alive. Then he passes the candle and there is Sherlock.

He is leaning against the wall, that much John can see. His long frame is a thin, visible outline against the darker blackness around them. „Sherlock. Sherlock, _answer me_." For what feels like a very long time, nothing happens. But then, finally, Sherlock's head is turned towards him, a bright dot in all the void.

„John?" The voice is raspy and deep and sounds positively horrible, but it's also Sherlock's, and John wants to cry in this moment but he pulls himself together, barely so, because they aren't safe here. He doesn't know what kind of sick joke this is supposed to be, but he certainly knows that much.

„Sherlock, can you move?"

It doesn't make sense that Sherlock would just stay here, on the tracks in the darkness leaning against a wall, if he could really just _go_. But the detective only gives him a very strange, very strangled sound in response and reaches out with a gloved right hand and John takes it in his gloved left hand. _Too many layers, too little time to do anything about it._ He picks up the candle on their way back and its light reflects from the wet parts of the wall. Wet? More letters. John doesn't want to read this, but now that he has seen the words, he can't really help it.

**leaking from your eyes like liquid pain**

A strange shudder creeps up John's spine and he tightens the grip of his left hand. The one that is holding Sherlock's. He doesn't get a reply. The other man just follows him, clumsily and without a word, and that is downright_ creepy_ and almost worse than the rest of the evening has been combined. It's just _wrong wrong wrong_.

But he'll fix this.

Somehow they make it back to the platform and John helps Sherlock up while his eyes dart back and forth, checking for danger, because he feels like they are being watched and he can usually trust his feelings.

He can't see anyone.

„Okay, we're clear. Let's..."

Oh God. _Oh God,_ Sherlock's face. No. _Nonono._ This can't be. _No._ He stumbles backwards, drops the candle, lets go of Sherlock's hand in the process and suddenly feels very cold and very, very desperate.

„John..."

Blood. Blood around Sherlock's mouth, its his own obviously, but there no signs of an injury, the lips and skin are still intact, just bloody red and it's all over his chin too. Not even fully dry yet. And there are spots on the black coat he's wearing and the scarf and still dripping. But what's worse, what's so much worse, is the eyes.

Oh _God_, the _eyes._

They are bleeding too, and it looks bizzare, like red tears spilling all the way down Sherlock's cheeks. The iris, usually clear and icy blue, has gone completely black and for a horrid moment John thinks that Sherlock is permanently blinded, but then he realizes it's the pupils that are dilated beyond recognition. Looking into anything bright has to burn, has to _hurt_ and be horrible and painful and it looks so grotesque. Sherlock's skin is white beyond compare, and he looks very much like a ghost that visits you in your nightmares to devour you, and he also looks small and afraid and hurting and very, very vulnerable.

„Sherlock, listen to me. It's all right, it's me, we'll work this out. Cover your eyes. Just put your hands over your eyes, okay? Can you do that? For me?"

And for maybe the first time ever, Sherlock obeys without protest. He just raises his hands, holds them up as if he tries to look at them, and then very delicately covers his eyes with them.

John turns around, fishes for the gun in his coat, and _looks at the wall._

**HE COMES**

He is shouting, shouting and almost screaming nonsensical words as he races up the staircase and into the free, fresh night. His legs are shaking too much. He is supposed to be calm,_ he_ is supposed to be the _steady_ one now; instead he has Sherlock's elbow in a grip tight enough to bruise and pulls him along regardless of stairs and warnings and they nearly fall more than once and he doesn't care. His head is filled with the desperare, violent need to get _away._

Then they are outside and John starts to cry in the light of the street lanterns, while he sends an indecipherable message to Lestrade and he wants to call an ambulance but he just can't _breathe_ properly and Sherlock collapses almost on top of him, his breathing ragged and his hands still clamped over his eyes. He's in great pain, and he might very well die for all they know, and John is a _godforsaken_ doctor and he _needs_ to _get a grip_ right _this instant_.

He gets a grip.

Slowly, he pulls Sherlock's hands from his eyes. „Keep them closed." He says and pulls the gloves off. Those white, long fingers are trembling in his, and the veins are stark blue and clearly visible. John chechs for a pulse along the wrist and finds it too strong, too fast, too unsteady, but he _finds_ it. He pulls off Sherlock's scarf and finds the main artery pulsing against his long white neck. His skin looks pasty in the dim light, but he is breathing. He is breathing and his heart is beating and he is waiting patiently because he trusts John. Because he believes John can fix this.

Right now, John isn't convinced.

But he'll be damned if he doesn't try.


	2. Life

**A/N: **_Yeah. I should probably wrap this up and make room for other stories. Please note that neither my description of London nor the medical facts in this fic are based on profound knowledge. Also English isn't my first language. If you still find this acceptable (or, like, want to sue me for this), please leave a review. Thanks._

_Edit: Rewrote this a bit. It's still the same, just better. Thanks so much to those who already reviewed and read this regardless. It means the world to me.  
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><p><strong>He Who Waits Behind A Wall<strong>

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><p>By the time an ambulance arrives, things have changed.<p>

After John remembered that he is indeed a doctor, and a good one at that, and that he has seen more blood and gore and destruction on a person without completely losing it before, he calmed down considerably. He managed to move a shaking Sherlock to a nearby wall to have them out of the open. He removed the unresponding man's coat and spent a good ten seconds not freaking out again when he found tell-tale track marks under pasty white skin. He helped Sherlock back into his coat, lay him down on John's own jacket, propped his knees up and went to find water.

After his return, victoriously holding a scarf drenched at a nearby drinking fountain, he wrung some of the water into Sherlock's mouth who coughed and spit and finally threw up a considerable amount of blood while John held his head and ran soothing fingers through his tousled hair. Then he wiped Sherlock's eyes and chin clean and soaked the scarf again. When he brought the water to Sherlock's mouth this time, the detective sucked it out greedily. This time it stayed down.

The rest of the time John tried to keep a convulsing, whimpering and violently shaking Sherlock from falling asleep in his lap.

He doesn't know who called the ambulance in the end. It could have been Lestrade, tracking his phone upon recieving his screwed-up text message. Mycroft is more likely to be the caller as he has his security cameras everywhere and has probably followed John on his way to Regent's anyway. Maybe John made the call, after all. He can't really remember now and he doesn't care much either. He knows one of the nurses in the ambulance though; they are from Bart's. It calms him considerably to know that this is the real deal, that it isn't just another abduction.

Sherlock's heart stops beating twice this night. The second time he's in hospital, where they hook him up to all kinds of devices and IV bags to get the drugs out of his system. He is promptly transferred to OP, throughoutly examined and patched up white John has to stay put in the waiting room. The detective's brain takes no damage from it, as far as staff can tell. They plan to keep him in an artificial coma until he is stable. Sherlock is out of it for the worst twentyone hours of John Watson's life.

The first time it gives out on the cold paving stones of Regent's Street and it is John who breathes for him, John who massages life back into his body, breaking two ribs in the process. He'll never tell Sherlock how he came to that injury, and no one else will either.

The private hospital room Mycroft organized is bright and friendly, very expensive, and smells of desinfectant just like every other hospital room in the world. A sunny day passes the shutters without any acknowledgement from the inhabitants of the room. Sherlock is very still on the stiff bleached sheets of the bed, white on white, and his hair is impossibly dark against the pillow. A machine is breathing for him while another measures his heartbeats, and his eyes are taped over with cotton balls. He looks incredibly vulnerable and so broken that it is painful to lay eyes on him. But he is alive. That should count for something, shouldn't it?

John doesn't leave the chair next to the bed even once. And during the whole time, he never lets go of Sherlock's hand.

Mycroft makes his appearance several times, always carrying something with him. A sandwich that John doesn't eat. A steaming cup of tea that he doesn't touch. A blanket that John only notices hours later, draped over his slumped form with his head on the bed and a crick in his neck.

Eventually, with news.

The doctor in John listens to the reports and files them away for later. As far as one can tell up to this point, someone lured Sherlock out of the house via a comment on his website mere seconds after John left. That's why the man had his coat and scarf on him. After everyone was out, they spilled huge amounts of cow blood in the living room and wrote the messages on the windows.

There was a struggle, most likely, but Sherlock doesn't show any serious outer injuries so one can safely say that it was brief and he was outnumbered. They, whoever they are, injected something in his right arm, and that was that.

The drug is new, unfamiliar, and apparently based on an online rumour. That has John perk up.

"Some years ago, an online cartoonist introduced a higher entity named 'Zalgo' in one of his or her comic strips. For no apparent reason, this entity struck a cord with some readers who spread word about it online. Every time someone would ask what exactly Zalgo is, they would indulge in in allusions and enigmas about bleeding eyes and mass destruction. _Zalgo sings the song that destroys the earth. Zalgo holds the candle whose light is shadow. The bee-hive mind of chaos, without order. Zalgo who waits behind a wall._" Mycroft pauses there and his nose twitches. It is likely the first involuntary facial expression John has ever seen on a Holmes, and he forgets about it as soon as it passed. "_He comes._"

The hours pass in a mindless haze, splintered into fragments of nightmares and blurred vision and numbness. Lestrade looks in on them later that day. He brings biscuits that John knows without looking are from Mrs Hudson. He had forgotten all about his landlady up to this point and that leaves him feeling guilty. He doesn't let go of Sherlock's hand, but he shares the biscuits with Lestrade, and they sit in comforting silence for an hour before the D.I. has to go back to the Yard. He promises to come back later and asks John to give him a call if anything new comes up. John doesn't say anything.

When Sherlock comes out of coma, it is fast and harsh and so much like _Sherlock_ that John almost starts crying again. It is really nothing but a gradual tensing of the fingers that are wrapped around John's at first. The doctor immediately returns the soft squeeze and his friend takes a sudden, violent breath of his own. Keeps on breathing. Gropes at John's hand like it is some kind of anchor, and as if John's thumb gently rubbing his knuckles is the only thing that is keeping him alive.

They stay still like that for a long time. Then John goes and takes a shower in the adjacent bathroom, and when he returns, Sherlock is still waiting for him.

The doctors take off the cotton pads the next day. Sherlock's pupils react to light quite the way they ought to and he likely won't experience any lasting damage. He can't directly look into light yet and the room is kept dark for his sake, but he will be fine. They are both immensely grateful for the news. Lestrade presents to the consulting detective shades with pink-stained glasses. "It's a present from the Yard, to improve your view of the world or something", he mutters awkwardly and is rewarded with startled laughter from Sherlock. John hugs the inspector very, very tightly when he finally sees him out.

On day three in hospital, Sherlock is bored enough to solve cold cases in bed and demand to go home around his cracked ribs. John flees the room in favour of a shower before anyone can see the tears that once again threaten to spill from his eyes. He has set up camp in the spare bed in the room, not even bothering to leave except for the most basic needs, and he too wants to leave as quickly as possible. He also knows that some things just take time, and that he will not risk anything. They stay.

The report on the drugs comes in on day four. Aparently they cause a sudden breaking of certain blood vessels, leading to violent bleeding of mouth, nose and eyes of the victim. They dilate the pupils and cause a sudden contraction of the muscles, leading to spasms and immobility. For all it was worth, Sherlock shouldn't have been able to move at all down in the tube station. As the drugs make progress in the bloodstream, the victim experiences violent hallucinations, painful and dark and atrocious. It killed several lab rats simply out of fear, the report reads. John doesn't ask Sherlock about this part, and Sherlock never speaks about it.

Eventually, the poison reaches the heart and stops it.

Ironically enough, Sherlock's past as a drug addict seems to have saved his life in this occasion. Before anyone can say anything, John announces that no, this fact doesn't change anything. At all._ Ever._ Sherlock spends the day sulking over Lestrade's files.

On day seven, they return to Baker Street against advice from medical personnell. Mycroft lets them go because he knows that John is the better doctor, and John agrees because Sherlock is tearing himself apart in the confined space of the hospital room and it's painful to look at. The living room at home is just as they left it a week ago- a chaotic mess of books and papers and _things _that excite Sherlock and that John never looks at. The carpet is back to its old faded red and the walls are covered in brown wallpaper and yellow spray paint and bullet holes.

John writes a _Thank you_-message to Mycroft and conscientiously deletes it before Sherlock can see it.

They never hear a word about the attackers again from any official source, though they both suspect Moriarty to be behind it all. Gloating anonymous comments on both the Science of Deduction-website and the blog are investigated, the trails leading nowhere. One day, though, John recieves a photo in the mail. It shows a pile of bodies. Above them, red letters on the wall spell a short message.

**Rest Assured_._**

The package also holds his army gun that he lost somewhere _that night_, cleaned and loaded. John locks it back in the desk drawer in their living room with a grim smile and the feeling of relief. No one ever loses a word about it.

All things considered, life goes on.


End file.
